Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of iHeart Radio.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 2: my name is Noel.
Speaker 3: They called me Ben.
Speaker 4: We're joined as always with our super producer Paul, Mission
Speaker 4: Control decand most importantly, you are you. You are here.
Speaker 4: That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. Uh,
Speaker 4: let's open this way.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 4: How do you guys feel about the emergency alert system
Speaker 4: in the United States? I personally dig it. I think
Speaker 4: it's a cool thing.
Speaker 3: This is only a test, you guys, This is only
Speaker 3: a test. It's cool, man.
Speaker 6: It's sort of like, uh uh, it's like an international
Speaker 6: or a national firearm. Like I guess if we grow
Speaker 6: up experiencing probably more fire drills in school than actual
Speaker 6: you know, emergencies, and then we've probably all experienced more
Speaker 6: tests of the emergency broadcasting system than actual necessary uses
Speaker 6: of it.
Speaker 3: But it's good to have it there in the back pocket,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And it's better that their test, you know, it's
Speaker 4: unsent that most of what we hear there are tests.
Speaker 2: Yeah, not too many invasions of the country. Yet a
Speaker 2: couple of tornadoes, a couple of you know, one hundred tornadoes,
Speaker 2: which are it's important to have this kind of thing available. Well,
Speaker 2: we'll get into the reasons, but man, the history of
Speaker 2: this thing, the reason why I got put in place
Speaker 2: is ish.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and it's this system is similar to the Amber
Speaker 4: Alert for missing persons, which should be you know, common
Speaker 4: knowledge to most folks in the US. It's meant to
Speaker 4: educate and protect the public, to arm them with information.
Speaker 4: It's one of those thinking about this. It's one of
Speaker 4: those rare things that pretty much everyone in government and
Speaker 4: private industry agree on. Let's try to keep people from
Speaker 4: dying in disasters. No one wants another hurricane Katrina, for example,
Speaker 4: or you shouldn't.
Speaker 6: Oh no, Well, it requires such a commitment, such a
Speaker 6: buy in from everybody, right, Like I mean, I know
Speaker 6: it's the law, but you know, when you get that
Speaker 6: Amber alert, you get it on your phone, you get
Speaker 6: it on the rate, you get it everywhere, and it
Speaker 6: has to buy its very nature, has to have one
Speaker 6: hundred percent adherence.
Speaker 3: Mm hmm. Yeah.
Speaker 4: And for most Americans, the emergency alert system or street
Speaker 4: name EAS is an infrequent cameo in your life. Imagine
Speaker 4: you're listening to the radio in your car, maybe you
Speaker 4: have local TV on in the background, you're checking your phone.
Speaker 4: You receive a text from the system, and now that
Speaker 4: you have this information, you are more likely to survive
Speaker 4: dangerous events so long as the system is working, so
Speaker 4: long as the information is real, so long the whole
Speaker 4: thing hasn't been hacked. Here are the facts. All right,
Speaker 4: we're kind of describing it, and it's a familiar thing again,
Speaker 4: But for people who are not listening from the United States,
Speaker 4: who may have their own equivalent warning system, how would
Speaker 4: we describe the EAS.
Speaker 2: Well, it's a way for the United States government to
Speaker 2: interrupt broadcasting basically with an emergency message of any sort.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: It's mostly for radio and television, at least back in
Speaker 2: the day. That's how it was developed. Right, So, if
Speaker 2: anyone was listening to something or watching something, the system
Speaker 2: was a tool basically for the president himself or herself
Speaker 2: to jump on and say, hey, everybody, we got to
Speaker 2: watch out for this thing.
Speaker 6: And it's it's triggered, you know, I mean, it's we'll
Speaker 6: get more into it. But we actually, as the employee
Speaker 6: of a large broadcast company. We are all required to
Speaker 6: take training courses periodically around the emergency alert system, how
Speaker 6: to use it, how it's used, its history, and most importantly,
Speaker 6: how to not accidentally trigger it, because that can.
Speaker 3: Be done right.
Speaker 4: As a result, we've been directed not to play this
Speaker 4: the actual tone, which should be familiar to everybody. We
Speaker 4: can describe it for you. It should only be used
Speaker 4: for testing, educational, or actual emergency purposes. The best way
Speaker 4: to describe it going to the primary sources is, as
Speaker 4: Matt pointed out, it's back in the day, it was
Speaker 4: primarily for radio and TV broadcasters. Now it'll be for
Speaker 4: satellite operators, wireless cable systems. Also you know, mobile phones
Speaker 4: or smartphones. And the whole goal is to, at the
Speaker 4: most extreme version, provide the President of the United States
Speaker 4: the capability to address the entirety of the American people
Speaker 4: within ten minutes during a national emergency, which is a
Speaker 4: heck of a heck of a time window and very
Speaker 4: impressive to do this, I mean, with so many moving parts.
Speaker 6: Whereas an amberiller it might be more regionalized or even localized,
Speaker 6: the eas is nationalized.
Speaker 3: And potentially potentially one hundred percent.
Speaker 6: And it's so interesting because, you know, Matt, you pointed
Speaker 6: out that it is something that has a background in
Speaker 6: just you know, old school broadcast methods like TV and radio.
Speaker 6: Therefore too when you hear that test, I swear I
Speaker 6: almost guarantee the voice of that guy you hear was
Speaker 6: probably recorded back in the fifties and they're still using
Speaker 6: the same one just because it's just always I mean,
Speaker 6: he sees like this is a touch of the emergency.
Speaker 3: I swear that's gotta be vintage day.
Speaker 6: That has to be well, you save money, oh yeah,
Speaker 6: but it's also just in place. It's probably it's just
Speaker 6: like whatever systems that are in place, server rooms, whatever
Speaker 6: might be. It's got to be more low tech than that.
Speaker 6: And this is just what's in there.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 2: But with the new system, you can upload any MP
Speaker 2: three that's right through the system, right which which plays
Speaker 2: into you know, the later discussions in this episode about
Speaker 2: what happens if somebody takes over. I just want to
Speaker 2: point out we're talking about it as a national system,
Speaker 2: but can also be localized. The only way I've ever
Speaker 2: personally experienced it is through a weather alert when the
Speaker 2: when naa National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration issues an alert that's
Speaker 2: very localized to like a town or a region of
Speaker 2: a state, and within the United States, that says, hey,
Speaker 2: there has been a tornado warning in your area, or
Speaker 2: there's you know, there's a tornado watch happening right now.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Because there's a triumvirate of agencies taking taking helm
Speaker 4: of this in some way. It is true. Interesting fact
Speaker 4: if you want to be real fun at a party.
Speaker 4: The EAS is theoretically deployable on a nationwide level. However,
Speaker 4: the President has so far fingers crossed, knock on wood,
Speaker 4: not done that. So you're much more likely to hear
Speaker 4: this on a regional or local level through state or
Speaker 4: territorial or tribal authorities. And this is a good thing.
Speaker 4: That's why the voices might sound a little bit different
Speaker 4: when they get to the details of the thing versus
Speaker 4: the announced you know, the ubiquitous tone of the test.
Speaker 4: The triumvira here is FEMA, the disaster guys, and then
Speaker 4: they team up with the FCC, the communications gang, and
Speaker 4: then as previously mentioned a moment ago, Noah, the National
Speaker 4: Oceanic Atmospheric Administration. Without getting too into the weeds, FEMA
Speaker 4: maintains the system. NOAH, through their National Weather Service branch,
Speaker 4: is responsible for most of the alerts that get sent
Speaker 4: out way or another, and the FCC's role is to
Speaker 4: set the standards for the networks participating to kind of
Speaker 4: determine the flow of traffic right in the order of operations.
Speaker 4: Everybody works together to make sure this thing comes into
Speaker 4: play when we need it. And that is why we
Speaker 4: hear the test. You know. It's just like how the
Speaker 4: military has to do drills all the time so that
Speaker 4: when they're in an actual combat situation they know what
Speaker 4: to do and it is familiar. That's the whole points.
Speaker 4: That's why you hear this at the weirdest times. It's
Speaker 4: a little cameo in your life.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, and I remember growing up when the TV
Speaker 2: was on way more frequently actually on cable or something.
Speaker 2: It would be a specific cable provider that would run
Speaker 2: a test or you.
Speaker 4: Know, or like a CBS affiliate, NBC affiliate.
Speaker 2: Even way back then. It would be on that level
Speaker 2: of the actual broadcaster that was doing it rather than
Speaker 2: the company that sends the entire of the cable signal
Speaker 2: to you.
Speaker 4: And I want to go back to the point about
Speaker 4: the training, because this is something a couple of us
Speaker 4: we're talking about off air before we rolled. My favorite
Speaker 4: part about that kind of annual training is imagining how
Speaker 4: bad things would have to get, like how far civilization
Speaker 4: and chains of command would have to collapse for some
Speaker 4: g man to hit me up and say, hey, podcast guy,
Speaker 4: you've got to warn everyone about the tornado in Oklahoma,
Speaker 4: the super Tornento. It would have to be a shark
Speaker 4: tornado at that point, Like how many It's kind of
Speaker 4: like when you think of how many people in government
Speaker 4: would have to be out of play for, you know,
Speaker 4: the mayor of a specific state to become commander in chief.
Speaker 6: It is interesting, though, how this sort of loses its
Speaker 6: teeth a little bit with the advent of more on
Speaker 6: demand services, you know, like podcasting. It'd be damn it
Speaker 6: would be impossible to implement that in a podcast because
Speaker 6: people are getting the thing. It's on their system, you know,
Speaker 6: disconnected from the Internet potentially, and they're listening to it,
Speaker 6: consuming it whenever they want. And such is the case
Speaker 6: too with like any kind of YouTube. And I don't know,
Speaker 6: like I'm interested to know is there a future proofing
Speaker 6: of this or is there some kind of modern version
Speaker 6: that could break into Internet streams.
Speaker 3: I don't know the logistics so that would work.
Speaker 4: Honestly, the best solution, which is imperfect, the best solution
Speaker 4: deployed and we'll get to this in just a couple
Speaker 4: of minutes, is the advent of cell phone networks. I'm
Speaker 4: holding up a phone. It's the advent of those issuing
Speaker 4: the warnings via text because of course, not everybody has
Speaker 4: the radio on all the time. In a world where
Speaker 4: a ton of people aren't watching you know, old rabbit
Speaker 4: e or broadcast TV, we have to wonder how effective
Speaker 4: this could be. We need people to know about natural disasters, fires, floods,
Speaker 4: high winds, hazardous materials, ghastly, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4: Your local DuPont factory explodes and the cloud is moving
Speaker 4: north northeast. The people there might not be listening to
Speaker 4: the radio, so it's the fastest way to get to
Speaker 4: them is statistically through the use of phones, since most
Speaker 4: people have those.
Speaker 2: Do you guys remember October of last year? I know,
Speaker 2: was it October? It was last year? There was a
Speaker 2: nationwide test with this stuff, specifically to test out the
Speaker 2: new cell phone alerts with the EAS and it was
Speaker 2: a big deal.
Speaker 3: You made the news. I mean it was a like
Speaker 3: an event, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was like everybody needs to be aware that
Speaker 2: this is a test, because.
Speaker 3: There were months in advance.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they were afraid that there would be, you know,
Speaker 2: at least small pockets of us that would freak the
Speaker 2: heck out, even though it says on it it's a test.
Speaker 2: Just that sound alone, and just that I think we've
Speaker 2: been primed since childhood, at least I know I have
Speaker 2: been that that sound. It means there is real stuff
Speaker 2: going down right now.
Speaker 6: I'm actually really anxious to talk to my kid about
Speaker 6: this because I would hazard a guess that they are
Speaker 6: not aware of this system or that sound at all.
Speaker 3: That I really do bet that's the case.
Speaker 4: Well, if they have a phone, they're going to learn
Speaker 4: about it pretty quickly.
Speaker 3: Man's surely sure, and that you know.
Speaker 6: But it's also just it hits you a little different
Speaker 6: than what you're talking about, Matt, that almost nostalgic quality
Speaker 6: that we attached to it, you know, left of this
Speaker 6: is serious business, guys.
Speaker 4: What the whole idea though, is uh is noble right
Speaker 4: if ambitionious? The idea that we could give the public
Speaker 4: time to get to higher ground in a tsunami event,
Speaker 4: or find shelter from something really fast and unpredictable like
Speaker 4: a tornado. This system, for all its imperfections, has saved lives,
Speaker 4: and it's a critical piece of infrastructure. It's weird to
Speaker 4: think that this did not This was not always a
Speaker 4: thing in the United States. It came after the advent
Speaker 4: of radio technology and other mass communication platforms. Noah's Weather
Speaker 4: Bureau didn't give the public a heads up about severe
Speaker 4: weather warnings until nineteen fifty, and it was kind of
Speaker 4: catch twenty two Joseph Heller esque because before then, the
Speaker 4: government boffin thinking was, if we issue these emergency alerts,
Speaker 4: we could lead to we could accidentally create widespread panic,
Speaker 4: not the band, we could make false reports. We could accidentally,
Speaker 4: with the best of intentions, create a disaster when there
Speaker 4: wasn't really one. So they were very conscious, just as
Speaker 4: so this up. They're very conscious that the power to
Speaker 4: address so many people at once could be incredibly dangerous.
Speaker 3: It is the're on hands where it to fall into them.
Speaker 2: You know, Well, let's talk about that date, that year,
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty. Why do we think the United States decided
Speaker 2: it needed this system in nineteen fifty. Gotta say, not
Speaker 2: this specific date, but what happened just before nineteen fifty,
Speaker 2: just a couple of years before. Oh, I don't know,
Speaker 2: the atomic bomb?
Speaker 6: Yeah, right, So, like say, this is when you get
Speaker 6: a lot of duck and cover like videos and things
Speaker 6: like that.
Speaker 3: This is of that.
Speaker 2: Era because there's a real fear that well, hey, if
Speaker 2: we can do this to a country where all you know,
Speaker 2: in Japan, where in these two cities, like we gave
Speaker 2: them fair warning with pamphlets or whatever, but we still,
Speaker 2: you know, somewhat glassified quite a large swath of two cities.
Speaker 2: What if that happens to us somewhere? How how are
Speaker 2: we gonna let people know? Right?
Speaker 3: Did you just say glassified?
Speaker 2: I'm not. I'm sorry, I'm that's to.
Speaker 3: No, I never heard that. I've never heard that. I
Speaker 3: think it's a I've never heard it before. I think
Speaker 3: it's very appropriate.
Speaker 4: I just that's ye atomized, sure, lay waste, yes, left
Speaker 4: no stone standing on another stone, terrified. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 4: that's I think that is the terrifying genesis of the
Speaker 4: change in thinking in governance there at least in the US.
Speaker 4: And the better minds won the day we could say,
Speaker 4: because by nineteen fifty one, after Noah went public with
Speaker 4: publishing these available severe weather warnings, radio stations on the
Speaker 4: AM band would carry broadcasts during disasters or other emergencies. So,
Speaker 4: to MAT's point, completely correct. In my opinion, it's a
Speaker 4: it's a Cold War thing, and unlike a lot of
Speaker 4: other Cold War legacies, this was a good thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, very good thing. Thank goodness for the EAS.
Speaker 4: Yeah, which was started as the EBS Emergency Broadcast System.
Speaker 2: That's how I remember you're hearing in nineteen sixty three,
Speaker 2: Emergency Broadcast System.
Speaker 4: Yeah, because they used it until nineteen ninety seven. The
Speaker 4: Emergency Alert System came in in nineteen ninety seven. Why
Speaker 4: did it switch? Well, if we're looking for historical precedent,
Speaker 4: why not the nineteen ninety six Olympics. I'm kidding, that's
Speaker 4: not true, but it sounds kind of plausible.
Speaker 2: Wow. Yeah, yeah, if you don't.
Speaker 4: Think about it, it sounds plausible.
Speaker 2: Sure, sure, But it was mostly because that's around the
Speaker 2: same time that I got my first cell phone, right,
Speaker 2: so they must have been changing things up to noting
Speaker 2: that they were now cellular networks coming out.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, to broaden the scope a bit. I think
Speaker 4: that's quite astute. And then twenty twelve the all the
Speaker 4: weird conspiracies about the Mayan calendar were incorrect, and Mayan
Speaker 4: people have been saying that forever, but because the world
Speaker 4: didn't end in twenty twelve, we see the rollout of
Speaker 4: the text the emergence the wireless emergency alerts or weas, and.
Speaker 2: They were sending texts all the way back in twenty twelve.
Speaker 3: Yes, ah, I don't know.
Speaker 2: How, I'm like missed out. I don't I have no
Speaker 2: recollection of that occurring.
Speaker 6: I think it was widely adopted, like in terms of
Speaker 6: like a you know, regularly used thing. But I do
Speaker 6: remember early texts that would come from say your cell
Speaker 6: phone provider telling you things about your bill or whatever,
Speaker 6: and it was almost like what is this novelty thing?
Speaker 3: Because it was hard to input data into those.
Speaker 6: You had to use the alpha numeric kind of like
Speaker 6: one two three kind of like system, and it was
Speaker 6: just a little bit tricky with early little Nokia brickfallons.
Speaker 6: That's I do remember it as far back as then
Speaker 6: as it being a capability.
Speaker 2: But we're talking about twenty twelve, right, like that's when
Speaker 2: this wireless thing came in where so they would actually
Speaker 2: send emergency information via text message to you.
Speaker 4: Yeah. In addition, started with yeah cell phones in New
Speaker 4: Mexico in response to flooding twelve and it's.
Speaker 3: You know, we as IBB's ease.
Speaker 4: This is a lot of these are a lot of acronyms,
Speaker 4: but again they're important to understanding tonight's episode because it
Speaker 4: is an invisible infrastructure empire. But it's even though it's
Speaker 4: invisible and intangible, it's just as crucial as roads, bridges, electricity,
Speaker 4: drinking water, all the hits and sadly, just like so
Speaker 4: many other kinds of infrastructure, as we'll find this evening,
Speaker 4: the emergency alert system may be imperiled because what would
Speaker 4: happen if someone hacked it.
Speaker 6: We'll talk about just that after a quick word from
Speaker 6: our sponsor.
Speaker 4: Here's where it gets crazy. It could be an absolute
Speaker 4: utter catastrophe if someone was able to compromise a system
Speaker 4: this powerful. On the national level, shore that's possibly existential,
Speaker 4: but even on the regional or local level, this could
Speaker 4: really put a monkey wrench in things.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, imagine if everybody and let's just say a
Speaker 2: super small town, a couple thousand people, Imagine if everybody
Speaker 2: in that small town gets alerted that there's what do
Speaker 2: we say, guys, not a weather emergency, something more out
Speaker 2: there UFO, a UFOs landed in the middle of the town, right,
Speaker 2: And well, if that panic starts to set in, even
Speaker 2: with a couple thousand people, we know what that can do,
Speaker 2: like to the psychology of a group of people, right,
Speaker 2: and the dangerous situation they would all be in.
Speaker 4: Yeah, if you hacked any level of this, you would
Speaker 4: remove a foundational piece of the safety net for the
Speaker 4: American public, and you would remove their ability to shelter
Speaker 4: from or escape from a fast event like a tornado.
Speaker 4: People would die if you prevented this. So in the
Speaker 4: other scenario, the one I think you're referencing there, meta,
Speaker 4: you could leverage some aspect of the eas to issue
Speaker 4: fake or misleading warnings. You could create a disaster as
Speaker 4: a distraction. It's like a weaponized version of that old
Speaker 4: canard or fake story about Orson Wells and the War
Speaker 4: of the World's broadcast. We all heard that story, right,
Speaker 4: and hopefully we all know it's not true. Well, yeah,
Speaker 4: I mean, there's a quick background.
Speaker 6: It was like a radio play that was produced by
Speaker 6: Orson Wells's Radio Theater Company, and it was just so
Speaker 6: damn good and at least for the time, and it
Speaker 6: was not I guess, I mean it.
Speaker 3: Was caveat it. If I'm not mistaken, Ben.
Speaker 6: They certainly did, but people tuned in halfway a lot
Speaker 6: of times it didn't hear the opening sort of qualifier
Speaker 6: that this was just a you know play, And a
Speaker 6: lot of people really did think that we were being
Speaker 6: this is like a real news broadcast and we were
Speaker 6: being you know, invaded by alien forces.
Speaker 4: Yeah, some percentage of people believe that, but if we
Speaker 4: were Snoop, we would say it was mostly false. But
Speaker 4: the thing is it teaches us a real, an actual
Speaker 4: and plausible tactic. I guess we'll add one more scenario here.
Speaker 4: If you cut it off, you would you would be
Speaker 4: able to remove public knowledge of man made disasters as well,
Speaker 4: such as large scale attacks, terrorist incursions. Luckily, the US
Speaker 4: has super creepy eyes and ears all over the place,
Speaker 4: on the ground, the sea, the heavens, so there are
Speaker 4: redundant systems that will let the government know when a
Speaker 4: missile launches and so forth. But if you hack the eas,
Speaker 4: then the government might know about these things. But the
Speaker 4: public might not so very very dangerous water. Well, it's
Speaker 4: like you got too flip size kind of. You got
Speaker 4: the boy who cried wolf scenario, which is dangerous in
Speaker 4: and of itself, and then you have the like cutting
Speaker 4: it off entirely scenario, which is dangerous in a different way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's really scary to me, the thought
Speaker 2: of it could just not function when I personally or
Speaker 2: my family needs it to function. And have you guys
Speaker 2: ever been in a scenario where you've been at your
Speaker 2: house or you've been somewhere and you were unaware that
Speaker 2: there was going to be a severe storm and you
Speaker 2: for some reason were just oblivious to like what the
Speaker 2: sky was doing and what the clouds were doing, and
Speaker 2: the darkness or whatever it was, and then all of
Speaker 2: a sudden, you find yourself in the middle of a
Speaker 2: very severe weather event like that has happened to Melickers. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And I I don't know. I don't know if it's
Speaker 2: just if it's too out there, but the fear I
Speaker 2: know that I experienced in those moments, especially because I
Speaker 2: had a very young child at the time, just like
Speaker 2: what do I do? Oh God, what do I do?
Speaker 2: And when the panic sets in it's very difficult to
Speaker 2: act in that cool headed manner that you may actually
Speaker 2: need to have when there's an emergency situation.
Speaker 3: Little heads up goes a long way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And if I was paying attention and I'd gotten
Speaker 2: an alert or something, then I feel like I would
Speaker 2: have at least handled myself better than I did. I
Speaker 2: don't know. I think removing it is really scarier than
Speaker 2: I thought it would be.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, also this reminds me everybody check out
Speaker 4: the go Bag episode. We know it's not for everybody,
Speaker 4: but just like people train with the eas improv is cool,
Speaker 4: but preparation and prepared responses. Preparation and practice responses, I
Speaker 4: should say, are your best bet in things like this.
Speaker 4: What are you going to do when the grocery stores
Speaker 4: close their doors right and the water doesn't come out
Speaker 4: of the faucets. It's okay to look nuts nine times
Speaker 4: if the tenth time it's the correct move totally.
Speaker 6: And you know, while we certainly have issues where weather
Speaker 6: conditions can be very very serious here in the United States,
Speaker 6: you know, things like you know, hurricanes and tornadoes and
Speaker 6: all of that stuff. In Japan and in countries like that,
Speaker 6: I mean tsunamis are a serious issue, and so I
Speaker 6: was just looking up a little bit about the Japanese
Speaker 6: version of this technology, and they have kind of figured
Speaker 6: it in to where you will get an alert on
Speaker 6: your computer as well, like it's all tied in, whereas
Speaker 6: we're a little behind the curve here unless we've missed
Speaker 6: something and there's been an update.
Speaker 3: But I don't think that's the case.
Speaker 6: The jay alert system is much more robust than this
Speaker 6: what we have here.
Speaker 3: In the States.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I've seen it. I've experienced it, and you
Speaker 4: can go You can make an argument that there's more
Speaker 4: of a unified approach to it because the US system
Speaker 4: has so many moving parts. Very true, you know so.
Speaker 4: And also the legislation here does take a while to
Speaker 4: catch up. This is this is where we get to
Speaker 4: a crazier part. This all might sounds a little alarmist
Speaker 4: right now. If you're hearing this in a safe place
Speaker 4: and you look outside and you say, well, it's kind
Speaker 4: of hot, but it looks like a nice day for
Speaker 4: the day walkers out there, we have to step back
Speaker 4: and ask ourselves, could any of these events actually occur? Yes,
Speaker 4: And the people who are concerned about this are not
Speaker 4: just fringe wing nuts, you know on the chans somewhere.
Speaker 4: They're experts worried about this, and they have precedent. Do
Speaker 4: we want to talk? Oh gosh, all right. In February
Speaker 4: twenty thirteen, let's just do it this way. TV stations
Speaker 4: in multiple states Michigan, Montana, New Mexico, and then later
Speaker 4: a couple others encountered a pretty hilarious prank with profoundly
Speaker 4: disturbing implications. Is it okay if we play the clip?
Speaker 4: Mosty okay with you guys. We'll play just the first part. Okay, folks,
Speaker 4: here it is. We're only going to play part of
Speaker 4: this so that this does not get mistaken for an
Speaker 4: actual emergency alert.
Speaker 3: But here we go.
Speaker 4: This is KRTV out of Montana, a local CBS affiliate.
Speaker 4: In twenty thirteen. February twenty thirteen.
Speaker 5: Civil authorities in your area have reported that the bodies
Speaker 5: of the dead are rising from their graves and attacking
Speaker 5: their living. Follow the messages on screen that will be
Speaker 5: updated as information becomes available. Do not attempt to approach
Speaker 5: or apprehend these bodies, as they are considered extremely dangerous.
Speaker 3: I repeat.
Speaker 5: Civil authorities in your area have reported that the bodies
Speaker 5: of the dead are rising from their graves and attacking
Speaker 5: the living. Follow the messages on screen that will be
Speaker 5: updated as information becomes available. Do not attempt to approach
Speaker 5: or apprehend these bodies, as they are considered extremely dangerous.
Speaker 5: This station will now sees transmission, so please use your
Speaker 5: battery power radio tune into nine twenty am for formation.
Speaker 4: So what how would you feel if you heard that
Speaker 4: over a pancake commercial? By the way, in Montana.
Speaker 6: If it's interrupting pancakes, I mean, we're in serious trouble
Speaker 6: here as far as I'm concerned.
Speaker 2: Well, it was was it? Was it the news or
Speaker 2: was it a full on infomercial that was happening?
Speaker 4: This was this was a series of advertisements, okay, in
Speaker 4: the midst of something called the Steve Wilco Show.
Speaker 2: Okay, got You, Got You? So it's an advertising block
Speaker 2: inside one of their television shows. Yeah, no, I mean
Speaker 2: that's pretty horrifying. I think the language that was used
Speaker 2: by the person speaking there made it feel very genuine, right,
Speaker 2: except for, you know, the bodies of the dead are
Speaker 2: rising from their graves, which you're just like, nah, that
Speaker 2: what But the well, the response basically the person is
Speaker 2: telling you to do right, keep your radio, tune into
Speaker 2: the station for alerts, don't go near the bodies. It
Speaker 2: sounded genuine.
Speaker 4: Ugh, there's one like one forensic misstep or structural misstep
Speaker 4: the speaker makes. They use the first person tense, they
Speaker 4: say I at some point, which you're not supposed to.
Speaker 4: Oh really, But that's that's the thing a lot of
Speaker 4: people will miss. I didn't clock it until listening through
Speaker 4: a few times.
Speaker 3: But yeah, you're right.
Speaker 4: Like the fact that it has the actual emergency tone, right,
Speaker 4: the fact that there are specific, clear instructions, calls to action,
Speaker 4: next steps. This does feel even for skeptical people, right,
Speaker 4: A lot of folks would understandably have one of those
Speaker 4: oh crap, really moments.
Speaker 2: Do we know if that person got arrested and like
Speaker 2: find hundreds of thousands of not millions of dollars? Because
Speaker 2: they I feel like I could identify that person's voice.
Speaker 2: It was very I mean, is yeah, you would recognize
Speaker 2: that person if they stood in fornt of even talked.
Speaker 4: I think yeah, as far as we know, they have
Speaker 4: not been apprehended, and they hit multiple places over multiple days.
Speaker 4: We also know I was surprised to find that at
Speaker 4: least at the time, the fine for this kind of
Speaker 4: thing that we call a broadcast signal intrusion was up
Speaker 4: to a year in jail and one thousand dollars.
Speaker 2: One thousand dollars.
Speaker 4: That's it, I know, right, that's.
Speaker 2: So crazy because in our FCC training we learned that
Speaker 2: there was some radio show that played this the official
Speaker 2: eas tone and all of that bringing stuff, and then
Speaker 2: they could find hundreds of thousands of dollars. It was
Speaker 2: a lot of money.
Speaker 6: But is that like you're talking about for an individual
Speaker 6: ben for this was my understanding here at the time.
Speaker 4: God these intrusions, so they probably, I mean, as a
Speaker 4: result of this, obviously a lot of things changed because
Speaker 4: someone had the proof of concept and said, hey, we
Speaker 4: can convince small towns everywhere or regions of states that
Speaker 4: dead are rising from the grave. And yeah, that's part
Speaker 4: of why I think so many media companies clamped down
Speaker 4: on this stuff. The stations evolved all very quickly, to
Speaker 4: their credit, launched into damage control and they said, look, hey,
Speaker 4: if anybody's wondering dead people are still dead. That part
Speaker 4: hasn't changed. We're sorry there was an interruption in the programming.
Speaker 4: We're figuring out what's going to happen after this, and
Speaker 4: this also I think calls to mind other infamous signal
Speaker 4: intrusions like the Max Headroom event in nineteen eighty seven
Speaker 4: that we covered in depth previously, or the Captain Midnight
Speaker 4: thing where he took over HBO for a second.
Speaker 5: Mm hmm.
Speaker 2: Let's get as. I just wanted a note here. I
Speaker 2: didn't know the FBI would get involved if you try
Speaker 2: and hijack the emergency broadcast system like that or the EA.
Speaker 6: It makes sense, though, right, because you're like crust, I mean,
Speaker 6: it's it's uh, it's federal. You know, it's a federal system.
Speaker 6: You're doing something that affects things across state lines, you know,
Speaker 6: literally every potentially every state line.
Speaker 3: Uh yeah, I mean I.
Speaker 6: Didn't know that either, wouldn't necessarily immediately thought that, but
Speaker 6: when you say it out loud, it does kind of
Speaker 6: make sense in its own way, right.
Speaker 2: Well. Yeah, but in the case we just talked about,
Speaker 2: that was one tiny little station in Great Falls, Montana,
Speaker 2: right where that broadcast alert went through with that fake one,
Speaker 2: But the FBI just immediately was on the case.
Speaker 4: Yeah, It's like how it's a federal crime to mess
Speaker 4: with the mail.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I guess that's true.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and you know they're they're not playing. And also
Speaker 4: a lot of people got caught out because they learned
Speaker 4: that they were not as safe as they thought they were.
Speaker 4: And objectively, for a lot of people, probably a lot
Speaker 4: of our longtime listeners who happened to see this, it's
Speaker 4: kind of hilarious, right, No, because no one got killed spoiler,
Speaker 4: No one got killed by the undead, and as far
Speaker 4: as we know, no one died in some sort of
Speaker 4: ensuing panic. But this was a shot across the bow
Speaker 4: of broadcasting infrastructure, and later analysis seemed to find that
Speaker 4: the most mundane possible reason for this was indeed the cause.
Speaker 4: The head of the Michigan Association of Broadcasters said, here's
Speaker 4: what happened. TV stations bought this equipment for these emergency systems,
Speaker 4: and that equipment, like so many electronics who buy even today,
Speaker 4: came with default passwords. And the folks who were setting
Speaker 4: this up at their local stations just didn't change the
Speaker 4: default passwords. That's what the trade group said. You just
Speaker 4: kept the password admin for admin one, two, three four,
Speaker 4: And you were like, all right, that's fine, I got
Speaker 4: other stuff to do.
Speaker 2: That's so funny. That's the exact problem that all of
Speaker 2: these emergency road signs are having, where every all of
Speaker 2: the you know, Department of Transportation.
Speaker 3: Ones with the texts, yeah, the little you.
Speaker 2: Know with it's not scrolling texts. They like display some
Speaker 2: text then blips out, then displays some more texts and
Speaker 2: that thing. And those systems, almost all of them have
Speaker 2: a little panel in the back that you can access
Speaker 2: that usually isn't locked, and they've got a default password
Speaker 2: and anybody can walk up there at any time and
Speaker 2: just change the thing and say, oh, zombies ahead.
Speaker 4: It's like, how it's so terrifyingly easy to hack traffic
Speaker 4: lights in most of America. It's because it's like it's
Speaker 4: a why would you situation?
Speaker 2: I didn't know that you can just open a panel
Speaker 2: somewhere and just hack them.
Speaker 3: Well, there's a very maybe A mentioned this.
Speaker 6: There's a very specific episode of mcguyver where he yeah,
Speaker 6: it's a panel, like it's like a at least back
Speaker 6: in the eighties or whatever, it was like a box
Speaker 6: that if you break into, there's like circuit boards and
Speaker 6: he kind of you know, switched some jumpers or whatever.
Speaker 6: You know. The mcguiver, but he did it as a
Speaker 6: way of creating a diversion, but it actually could have
Speaker 6: potentially caused a traffic bile up, but could have killed
Speaker 6: in a peoples. That always really sketched me out about mcguiver.
Speaker 4: Oh my gosh, we're going somewhere with this, folks. Because
Speaker 4: right now, in a lot of places, the traffic lights
Speaker 4: are are wirelessly networked, which is a convenience. But with
Speaker 4: that convenience comes the opportunity for Shenanigans. University of Michigan
Speaker 4: researchers back in twenty fourteen found that you could with
Speaker 4: a simple laptop, nothing like no NSA or NRO black
Speaker 4: box stuff, with a regular, publicly available laptop, you could
Speaker 4: hack traffic light networks. And you see this in The
Speaker 4: Italian Job. You see this in other films, right, and
Speaker 4: I guess you see it in video games too, right.
Speaker 3: I think it was in some of those.
Speaker 2: Yeah there, well there, What is that video game where
Speaker 2: it's specifically about hacking the entire city and everybody in it?
Speaker 2: There's Camp Watch Dogs. Yeah, that's the one. That's what
Speaker 2: I'm thinking about.
Speaker 4: Okay, I thought that was a good game. I don't
Speaker 4: think I ever finished it.
Speaker 2: I never played it, but I remember seeing lots and
Speaker 2: lots of promo for it.
Speaker 3: That's right, they spent a lot of money on the promo.
Speaker 4: And then the thing is these trade groups. It feels
Speaker 4: like they're acting in good faith, but we could also
Speaker 4: wonder whether they're trying to assign blame to someone else
Speaker 4: in this system of many moving parts. Are they saying, oh,
Speaker 4: it's the employees who just put in admin or didn't
Speaker 4: change their default password. Other people disagreed. Security firms. One
Speaker 4: that got quoted a lot at the time, a group
Speaker 4: called io Active. They said, look, it's deeper than the passwords.
Speaker 4: We found critical vulnerabilities in both the software and the
Speaker 4: hardware of all these stations across the United States. This
Speaker 4: means that just like hacking traffic lights, hackers could remotely
Speaker 4: compromise these devices, broadcast fake messages, potentially stop messages from
Speaker 4: going out if they were real. And then, I don't know,
Speaker 4: it gets weirder because they could also just go in
Speaker 4: and change the password, right, classic.
Speaker 3: Hacker power move.
Speaker 2: Yep. And this is we're still in twenty thirteen and
Speaker 2: immediately following that year, right because of this major thing
Speaker 2: which I improperly said was just from Montana, but it
Speaker 2: was Michigan, Montana and New Mexico. Sorry about that, guys,
Speaker 2: but it was a small station that was broadcasting out
Speaker 2: to a lot of places. So they're finding that in
Speaker 2: twenty thirteen, twenty fourteen. I'm assuming there are these vulnerabilities everywhere.
Speaker 2: So is there anything to do to change it? I'm
Speaker 2: assuming we made a lot of changes afterwards.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, hopefully. It kind of it put the burden
Speaker 4: on the individual stations, right, the individual outlets we want
Speaker 4: to shout out. Mike Davis, the chief research scientist of
Speaker 4: Bioactive at the time, he said something really scary in
Speaker 4: some twenty thirteen interviews. I think it was in well,
Speaker 4: let's start with the one right after this, like in
Speaker 4: February of twenty thirteen. He was talking to people various
Speaker 4: you know, security forms and news outlets that are more
Speaker 4: tech forward, and he said, look, here's the thing. Even
Speaker 4: after these attacks, I can go on Google Search, and
Speaker 4: just using Google, which was way better search system back then,
Speaker 4: I can easily find thirty different systems that can be
Speaker 4: hit the same way. Because if you don't change the
Speaker 4: default password, you can often find that default password online
Speaker 4: in a user manual makes things which trivializes the hacking exercise.
Speaker 2: Yeah, somebody somewhere is going to post it. I remember
Speaker 2: seeing that quote in one of these articles. It was
Speaker 2: just said, if there is a default password for any
Speaker 2: piece of hardware, someone has posted it online.
Speaker 3: Exactly.
Speaker 2: Think about how much troubleshooting everyone does with all their hardware.
Speaker 2: I mean that back then. Nowadays there's a forum somewhere
Speaker 2: where somebody's like, oh, that's an easy fix. Just use
Speaker 2: the default password.
Speaker 4: Go in type admin, do a quick reset. Yeah exactly.
Speaker 4: And this is something that remains scary today because the
Speaker 4: observations of these security experts would prove prescient. Similar tactics
Speaker 4: were shown in later attacks years after this. In February
Speaker 4: twenty seventeen, four years later, a radio station out of Winchester,
Speaker 4: Indiana got their emergency system hacked. Get this with the
Speaker 4: same tactics and the same frickin zombie apocalypse message. Really
Speaker 4: the same one. Someone waited four years and was just
Speaker 4: sort of snoopy duping around. Man, is the password still admin?
Speaker 3: These guys?
Speaker 2: Huh, yep, we got men. Do you guys? Have you
Speaker 2: guys watched any of the videos that you can find
Speaker 2: all of our social media where it's someone pranking like
Speaker 2: a family member with a very similar thing. It's mostly
Speaker 2: UAP and UFO invasion alien invasion stuff. But you can
Speaker 2: find videos where people have made very convincing looking pieces
Speaker 2: of news or something, or they've edited together an actual
Speaker 2: broadcast from news and then put in their own emergency
Speaker 2: about alien invasions. And it's mostly people our age or
Speaker 2: like ten years maybe, like parents and early grandparents who
Speaker 2: are getting getting hacked by their kids in pumps. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and Coast to Coast.
Speaker 3: Doesn't take the call.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they just said it to a cousin, a family
Speaker 4: member epic. You know, that's like an uncle or a
Speaker 4: dad joke, you know what I mean. And if you're
Speaker 4: just pranking one family member, who are we to interfere
Speaker 4: with your personal relationship. But if you're pranking like Montana,
Speaker 4: then you should kind of get in trouble.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's a big deal.
Speaker 3: It's a big deal.
Speaker 4: But also, you know, twenty thirteen to twenty seventeen talk
Speaker 4: about committing to the bit it gets. So we've we've
Speaker 4: given the funny part of this, but let's let's get
Speaker 4: to the even more dangerous part. Maybe after a word
Speaker 4: from our sponsors.
Speaker 3: Let's do it all right.
Speaker 4: They're further issues we talked. We had the question about
Speaker 4: the fallout of this right, the after what.
Speaker 3: Do you do?
Speaker 4: So the federal government came out made all these recommendations.
Speaker 4: The FCC did not, interestingly enough, mandate that everybody UH
Speaker 4: changed their passwords, but they strongly urged people to do so,
Speaker 4: which is weird. It's kind of like their signpost saying
Speaker 4: that if you go past this point, it's your fault.
Speaker 2: I mean, we tried to tell you. We tried to
Speaker 2: tell you. That is so weird because I guess you couldn't.
Speaker 2: I mean, how do you enforce that mandate? You send
Speaker 2: an agent to every broadcasting you know, room everywhere that
Speaker 2: has a piece of equipment that can do.
Speaker 4: This, And how do you justify the cost of that right?
Speaker 4: And how do you fight back against trade groups, private
Speaker 4: powerful private actors who say, you know, oh, come on,
Speaker 4: there's a one off. We got it. We sent an email.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just tell them to do it.
Speaker 3: We're good.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's the issue. The FCC also strongly recommends, even
Speaker 4: though we're being very careful with it, they strongly recommend
Speaker 4: never using those tones outside of genuine emergency alerts, testing
Speaker 4: or educational purposes, and that is a direct result of
Speaker 4: this twenty thirteen series of incidents. They also, let's see,
Speaker 4: they also said, oh, you know, update your software since
Speaker 4: things are increasingly connected online. But it was too late.
Speaker 4: The horses had left the barn. The hacker horses had
Speaker 4: left the broadcast barn, or something to that effect, and
Speaker 4: people did an update for years after the fact, because
Speaker 4: again it felt distant from them. Right, yes, I run
Speaker 4: a radio station, but I'm in Delaware. This stuff only
Speaker 4: happens in Montana.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, and it was a one off thing, right,
Speaker 2: it was a weird, weird one off that happened. And
Speaker 2: that's weird. That's probably not gonna happen to us. Come on,
Speaker 2: that's like lightning striking kind of thing. Wait, that happens
Speaker 2: all the time. Hold on, hell ry.
Speaker 3: Waiter. There's like a like a Broadway.
Speaker 6: So I was like lightning striking again and again and
Speaker 6: again and again.
Speaker 4: God, that's also a great oldie song. And shout out
Speaker 4: to the band Live because maybe, uh, maybe that's about
Speaker 4: the twenty thirteen incident before it happened, because I think
Speaker 4: they made the song beforehand. We found the culprit of
Speaker 4: the twenty thirteen the twenty thirteen hacks, we also found
Speaker 4: some terrible stuff that happened after this at that point
Speaker 4: about people not getting their s together are Palt Mike Davis,
Speaker 4: in a blog post a little bit after, just like
Speaker 4: in July twenty thirteen, said hey, remember how I told you,
Speaker 4: Just searching on Google found thirty different systems that can
Speaker 4: easily be hacked the same way or kinds of systems.
Speaker 4: He said, Well, in April of twenty thirteen, as we
Speaker 4: kept looking, we found two hundred and twenty two vulnerable systems,
Speaker 4: and then by July of that same year, we found
Speaker 4: four hundred and twelve. The numbers seem to be increasing
Speaker 4: rather than decreasing.
Speaker 2: And these are devices that are now online essentially or
Speaker 2: accessible remotely, Because that is a big deal. If you
Speaker 2: could only access this emergency alert system via plugging into
Speaker 2: a machine or something that then goes out right, something
Speaker 2: that is offline completely, that's one thing, because then that
Speaker 2: means you've got an intruder on the you know, on
Speaker 2: the premises that's doing some actual hacking. It's if it's online,
Speaker 2: then you just got to get into the network.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and then also we could argue that there is
Speaker 4: I don't think it's even an argument there's a clear
Speaker 4: and very strong incentive for that remote access because again,
Speaker 4: of that very short ten minute window.
Speaker 2: What are you going to send somebody in to the
Speaker 2: studio within that ten minutes to set up the EAS system.
Speaker 2: That's probably not going to happen unless you've got a
Speaker 2: lighthouse situation where somebody lives above the building.
Speaker 4: Or as always there there's someone always at the switch
Speaker 4: like nuclear operations sort. But that, yeah, that's the issue.
Speaker 4: Even in twenty twenty four, folks, we do not know
Speaker 4: for sure how many of these systems have been patched
Speaker 4: or fixed updated over the last ten years. We also
Speaker 4: don't know how many other new vulnerabilities may have arisen,
Speaker 4: and we know that this is a global thing. Broadcast
Speaker 4: signal intrusion is okay, ethics aside, I'll say it. It's fascinating.
Speaker 4: Who doesn't love a little pirate radio as it were?
Speaker 4: But we see similar instances I thought, I thought we
Speaker 4: particularly enjoy this one from nineteen seventy seven in the
Speaker 4: United Kingdom.
Speaker 6: In the UK, someone took over Southern television, which is funny.
Speaker 6: I mean, of course, there's southern parts of the UK,
Speaker 6: but we disassociate here being from the south, and that's
Speaker 6: what southern is. It's a regional ITV broadcaster. And on
Speaker 6: the twenty sixth of November nineteen seventy seven, audio was
Speaker 6: broadcast over the evening News from a quote galactic overlord
Speaker 6: who warned humanity that they had a quote once again,
Speaker 6: but a.
Speaker 3: Short time to live together in.
Speaker 2: Peace, and then they will be turned into pieces by me,
Speaker 2: the galactic overlord.
Speaker 3: Now I don't know.
Speaker 6: This to me seems sort of like a carpai DM
Speaker 6: kind of thing. You know, It's like, hey, listen, we
Speaker 6: don't have that long together on this planets. We might
Speaker 6: as well spend it living in peace. But it also,
Speaker 6: you know, could be taken as a.
Speaker 2: Threat just the fact that this person refer to themselves
Speaker 2: as an overlord. I mean, come on, that's not that's
Speaker 2: that's not.
Speaker 3: There benev overlords. There can be you know, positive overlords.
Speaker 4: So is it like what I'm just trying to figure
Speaker 4: out the org chart?
Speaker 3: Are there.
Speaker 4: Regular like surface lords, then there's a surface overlord, then
Speaker 4: there are like solar system lords, solar system overlords, thin
Speaker 4: galactic lords, thin galactic overlords.
Speaker 2: I don't know, man, I just know there are underlings
Speaker 2: and overlords, you know, in the between, right?
Speaker 4: Are there under lords?
Speaker 2: Oh? Now that's a good question.
Speaker 4: Check out a Weird Holes episode Mysterious Holds. Tell us
Speaker 4: if you yourself are at underlord. We know this as
Speaker 4: and maybe this is the crux. Here we end where
Speaker 4: it began. This has been a military tactic as well.
Speaker 4: Broadcast signal intrusion. The Nation of Israel swamped the signals
Speaker 4: from a Palestinian TV channel back in the day all
Speaker 4: mon Our TV to broadcast anti hamas propaganda. There were
Speaker 4: some Polish nerds, honestly, and I say we say that
Speaker 4: with great affection, they took over a TV broadcast in
Speaker 4: nineteen eighty four and they did it entirely as ideological actors.
Speaker 4: They were telling other people in Poland to boycott the
Speaker 4: national elections because they were corrupt. And that's a genuine danger, right. Honestly,
Speaker 4: the zombie thing's hilarious. The Max Headroom thing is hilarious.
Speaker 4: I guess technically we're supposed to tell you that both
Speaker 4: their criminal acts. So don't do it if you can
Speaker 4: avoid it, with understanding that you know you might be
Speaker 4: in a situation, but otherwise, you know, stick to your
Speaker 4: regularly schedule broadcast. I mean, what happens if an Internet
Speaker 4: savvy terrorist group gets a hold of part of these
Speaker 4: systems or god forbid, the entire shebang almost called it
Speaker 4: a skidadal.
Speaker 3: That's the next level of this type of stuff.
Speaker 6: We've talked about, you know, numerous times, the idea of
Speaker 6: you know, getting control of banking details or like records
Speaker 6: in terms of like you know, massive corporate collapse, you know,
Speaker 6: fight club type stuff, I guess, but that is where
Speaker 6: we're at in terms of like how the most havoc
Speaker 6: could be wrought without you know, having to set off
Speaker 6: a single bomb.
Speaker 2: I don't know, guys. It feels like with our interconnectivity
Speaker 2: now and with social media, you'd have to you'd have
Speaker 2: to take that system down, and you'd have to take
Speaker 2: down most of the primary Internet service providers like simultaneously.
Speaker 2: And if you did that, then I think everybody is
Speaker 2: in a super vulnerable position. But otherwise they're gonna be
Speaker 2: alerts that go out just via you know, somebody making
Speaker 2: a post, right, But then is that taken seriously?
Speaker 4: That's the thing, because you don't have to necessarily get
Speaker 4: all the way along the action spectrum of shutting stuff down,
Speaker 4: you could also contaminate the message. Both are herculean efforts. Honestly, like,
Speaker 4: it's not I don't think it's a thing that one
Speaker 4: super villain type person could do.
Speaker 3: I think you would.
Speaker 4: You would need to put together a team.
Speaker 2: I think it would have to be a military action
Speaker 2: to really pull it off.
Speaker 3: M M yeah.
Speaker 4: I mean, and if it's a if it's a terrorist
Speaker 4: level action, it was probably it would probably be a
Speaker 4: proxy group of some other state actor, right, because that's
Speaker 4: those are the most powerful terrorist groups right now. And
Speaker 4: what happens then if the the other issue is what
Speaker 4: if the system itself becomes so compromised that the public
Speaker 4: starts to ignore these warnings. You don't get the full
Speaker 4: attention when that tone comes on, it becomes the broadcast
Speaker 4: that pride wolf every This is crucial because every misstep
Speaker 4: or compromise of the emergency alert system diminishes its effectiveness
Speaker 4: going forward in a measurable way. The whole point is
Speaker 4: to get your undivided attention, right. It's classic behavioralism, right,
Speaker 4: It's it's Pavlov's dog and the bell. It's supposed to
Speaker 4: make you clock in right, and it's supposed to give
Speaker 4: you clear information, instructions and in doing so potentially save
Speaker 4: your life. Diminishing that effectiveness is a feasible goal of
Speaker 4: asymmetric warfare. You can you can wage a war in
Speaker 4: a different way.
Speaker 2: Now, it feels weird that we're talking about this now, guys,
Speaker 2: with the election coming up, with all the weirdness going
Speaker 2: on with both candidates, it feels more and more like
Speaker 2: we're going to get one of these alerts, but not
Speaker 2: for one of the reasons that we grew up, you know,
Speaker 2: learning we would get one of these alerts. It feels
Speaker 2: like there could be one for a legitimate.
Speaker 3: Call that's coming from inside the house kind of one.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I picture you like citizens as a faulty county.
Speaker 4: This is not a test. Be advised, totus. Joe Biden
Speaker 4: has consumed for margaritas at the day of and bust
Speaker 4: and his whereabouts are currently unknown. Do not approach seat shelter.
Speaker 2: Geez, why, guys, that's really funny. I have the scenario
Speaker 2: in my head where something happens to the sitting current
Speaker 2: president right before the election or before you know the
Speaker 2: next president is officially in office and sworn in, and
Speaker 2: some weirdness goes down because both October surprise, Yeah, because
Speaker 2: it feels like both sides are so entrenched and willing
Speaker 2: to do anything to maintain or gain power again, and
Speaker 2: it is just I don't know it.
Speaker 6: Well, it is a little liberating for it to be
Speaker 6: so kind of almost like we don't really like either
Speaker 6: side at this point.
Speaker 3: So it's kind of like, I don't think we.
Speaker 6: Are at the rest risk of pissing anybody off, particularly
Speaker 6: for having partisan opinions, because it's really just more about like,
Speaker 6: could we please preserve democracy?
Speaker 3: Could we please? That would be great?
Speaker 6: Could we please avoid civil war and Mad Max type
Speaker 6: scenarios that would be fantastic. Fascism, let's maybe avoid that one.
Speaker 2: See, there's this weird thing and I want to get
Speaker 2: too political, But in a lot of that thinking, I'm
Speaker 2: noticing that a lot of people believe one side is
Speaker 2: the one that's going to maintain democracy.
Speaker 3: Well, in my head, I know, you're right, you're right,
Speaker 3: you're right.
Speaker 2: Basically there's it's when we we just talked about on
Speaker 2: Strange News, the the changes that just occurred with Scotus,
Speaker 2: with the Supreme Court, with the power of the president.
Speaker 2: So it's just feeling more and more like something's getting
Speaker 2: set up and we're not. We can't see the full
Speaker 2: picture right now, and it might not be the people
Speaker 2: that whatever, whatever team you're on, it might not be
Speaker 2: your team.
Speaker 4: Well, the teams that are active, at least some of them,
Speaker 4: and this is proving conspiracy, are not the teams that
Speaker 4: you can vote for. Yeah, the idea of gently pushing
Speaker 4: people through propaganda is very real. It's more affordable now
Speaker 4: than ever. It's super hot in state craft because it's
Speaker 4: cheap and it works, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: Well, guys, we just did an entire episode on the
Speaker 2: system that the government alerts us if there's a problem.
Speaker 2: We just saw a couple of weeks ago, the system
Speaker 2: that's supposed to be US alerting that there's a problem.
Speaker 2: The nine to one to one system, the emergency services
Speaker 2: system in the United States went down, like in several
Speaker 2: major cities for and we're look, we're only talking about
Speaker 2: hours here, but for several hours, the nine to one
Speaker 2: to one system went down, which is a huge deal.
Speaker 2: And if we can't have that kind of emergency communication
Speaker 2: as a two way street at any time, I feel
Speaker 2: like I don't know. It genuinely freaks me out.
Speaker 3: Guys.
Speaker 4: This is why, you know, I agree fully with you, guys.
Speaker 4: This is why I think this is such a crucial episode,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean. Not every conspiracy involves the paranormal.
Speaker 4: Sometimes it's simply those who have power seeking more power,
Speaker 4: right or finding a more cost effective way to you know,
Speaker 4: for a lot of these bad faith actors, or these
Speaker 4: rival forces whatever you want to call them, terrorists state powers,
Speaker 4: they see themselves in a David versus Goliath's situation with
Speaker 4: the United States. By that means they prize and prioritize
Speaker 4: asymmetric warfare. It makes no sense to try to catch
Speaker 4: up with the US in building aircraft carriers. It is
Speaker 4: an unwinnable pursuit at this point, unless something really crazy
Speaker 4: goes wrong. You just spend a little bit less money
Speaker 4: figuring out how to kill the carriers. So if you
Speaker 4: can't attack the US physically on land, which geographic is
Speaker 4: quite difficult, then you grow domestic problems, and you can
Speaker 4: do that very affordably in any number of ways.
Speaker 2: Well, and just imagine, oh god, I hate giving these
Speaker 2: kinds of scenarios could but this is what I see
Speaker 2: in my head. The nine to one one outage was
Speaker 2: in Massachusetts is only for two hours, right, And the
Speaker 2: official word from that, from the people who run that
Speaker 2: system said, oh no, it was a firewall that was
Speaker 2: enacted temporarily for two hours that prevented calls from coming
Speaker 2: in to our system, so nobody could call nine one one.
Speaker 2: Imagine in this asymmetrical warfare scenario where you're attacking the
Speaker 2: eas right in some way, disabling it or hacking it,
Speaker 2: you attack a localized nine to one one system, like
Speaker 2: in a city where whenever you wherever you go in
Speaker 2: no one can alert. Like how nobody has the local
Speaker 2: police station in their phone when many some people do,
Speaker 2: but not many people have that. Right, you call nine
Speaker 2: one one and there's an emergency, and if that doesn't
Speaker 2: go through, as there's an action on the ground taking place,
Speaker 2: I don't know. There's another scenario where I just I
Speaker 2: can see it happening.
Speaker 4: I've seen stuff like that. Yeah, Like you could even
Speaker 4: do through through a couple of telephonic tricks. You could
Speaker 4: even subject a nine to one one center to the
Speaker 4: to the telephone equivalent of a d DOS such that
Speaker 4: the real calls don't go through, right, and then the
Speaker 4: Shenanigans ensue. It's a very dangerous thing, but it is
Speaker 4: unfortunately quite plausible, and that's why we are happy to report.
Speaker 4: Still most people in the United States do trust the
Speaker 4: emergency alert system. Nobody, for instance, is looking at an
Speaker 4: Amber alert on their phone and going fake news. Thankfully,
Speaker 4: we pay attention when it pops up, at least long
Speaker 4: enough to hear that iconic voice tell us whether or
Speaker 4: not this is only a test. Yeah, the unsung hero
Speaker 4: of unsung hero of interrupt.
Speaker 2: He's like the.
Speaker 3: Wilhelm scream of government broadcast cut ins.
Speaker 4: He's like the He's kind of like the producer voices
Speaker 4: on public radio. They never identify themselves. They just drop
Speaker 4: in and tell you what's coming up next after the news.
Speaker 2: Dude, they should get like al Pacino or somebody to
Speaker 2: do it. You know, we're across the entirety of the
Speaker 2: United States.
Speaker 4: Al this is a test of the emergency broadcast system. Kevin,
Speaker 4: He's always going to be Devil's advocate. He's talking to
Speaker 4: Kevin directly.
Speaker 3: What this does?
Speaker 4: I think, especially that beautiful scenario, mat this does give
Speaker 4: us a lot to think about how securit these systems today.
Speaker 4: In some cases, it appears to be the stuff they
Speaker 4: don't want you to know, So we want to hear
Speaker 4: from you, folks. We know that there's some of us
Speaker 4: out there this evening who have direct experience with this,
Speaker 4: certainly with the related field of online security right and
Speaker 4: security research. So tell us your thoughts, tell us the
Speaker 4: weirdest stuff you've heard on emergency alert systems, and hey,
Speaker 4: if you happen to be one of those folks who
Speaker 4: saw the zombie apocalypse alert live live is a weird
Speaker 4: word way to describe the zombie situation, but if you
Speaker 4: know what we mean, if you saw it in situ
Speaker 4: while it's happening, tell us your experience. We try to
Speaker 4: be easy to find online.
Speaker 3: We do.
Speaker 6: You can find it to the handle Conspiracy Stuff on
Speaker 6: Facebook where we have our Facebook group Here's where it
Speaker 6: gets crazy. On YouTube where we make videos and have
Speaker 6: them coming your way on the regular, as well as
Speaker 6: on XFKA, Twitter, on Instagram and TikTok. We are Conspiracy
Speaker 6: Stuff Show.
Speaker 2: You can also call us. We have a phone number.
Speaker 2: It's one eight three three std WYTK. When you call in,
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Speaker 2: say whatever you'd like, just at some point let us
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Speaker 2: send us a good old fashioned email.
Speaker 4: We are the entities that read every piece of correspondence
Speaker 4: we receive. Be well aware sometimes the void writes back.
Speaker 4: A special note for conspiracy realists not located in the
Speaker 4: United States, we would love to learn more about the
Speaker 4: creepy things in your neck of the Global Woods. This
Speaker 4: is not a test conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
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